The antidote that Blackwall had given her may have worked by scouring her internal organs, but it worked quickly. Within a few minutes Lilith's heartbeat returned to normal. Her hands and feet tingled painfully as her circulation picked up. Her mental fog cleared, her muscles ached, and the gash below her shoulder erupted into stinging while Blackwall spoke.
"How many attacked you and your boy?" he asked her. "Were there more Templars?"
Lilith swallowed a few times to avoid vomiting again from pain and nausea.
"Yes," said Lilith. "There were more Templars." She couldn't avoid spitting their name like a curse. "They're injured."
"So they've taken to attacking families with children," he said.
"Apparently," she said. He glared at the path ahead of them, mentally somewhere else. "I don't think these ones were in their right minds, and Matthias…my son…he's got magic."
"Which is reason enough for the sorry fucking bastards. Of course," he said. "But you're searching, and we don't have time. Do they have him now?"5
"No," said Lilith. "He got away from them. I think…he'd be taking the main road. He doesn't know how else to go and I…" she remembered her last glimpse of Oli, slumped against Karina. "I don't know if he's got help."
"He'll come to the Crossroads, then," he said. "There's a fair bit of fighting there. The refugees haven't been staying. But there's word the Inquisition's sending more troops that way as well."
Lilith tried to follow what he was saying, trying to see through the gaps in the trees and to envision the road ahead of them. It was hard to focus. The streaks of green light from the Breach filled her with dread, and her terror at envisioning Matthias navigating the Crossroads didn't ease her stomach any. Her insides crawled.
"How long a journey if I go around the Crossroads?" she asked, shifting at the discomfort.
"Depends on what you run into on your way there," said Blackwall. "It might add hours, might add days. I'll tell you this much—I wouldn't go through Hafter's Woods. If you manage to get around the rifts out there, the bandits—"
Lilith's stomach contracted, and she gagged loudly.
"Ugh. Maker, that's awful," she muttered. She breathed in deeply through her nose.
"It is," he said, with a short, sharp laugh. "I've taken it. Vile stuff."
"Not the worst thing," she said. "I think the poison was a bit more vile." Her wound throbbed. She turned to examine it. It was hard to get a clear idea of its size, since much of her shirtsleeve was stained. She saw only that it was raw and open and needed bandaging or there'd be trouble before she could get halfway to Redcliffe.
"That's your only injury?" Blackwall asked her.
"Somehow it is," she said, picking at and peeling back a bit of cloth from the bloody area. She hissed in pain, and felt around for her pack. It sat in the grass by her side. She rifled through it for potion containers and found two of the small ones Matthias had packed, plus a length of cloth bandage. The bottle, a health potion, she drank from, thanking the Maker her health potions went down smooth and tasted like nothing.
The second, a small bottle of musty green antiseptic, she opened. She grimaced at it. She hated this particular antiseptic with a passion; it made Matthias cry every time and damn near made her cry too.
"So, there are bandits in Hafter's Woods," she said, trapping her lower arm between her knees and turning to face Blackwall. He held her gaze for a moment, then quickly dropped it again.
"Hafter's Woods are lousy with bandits," he said. "But I imagine you've had dealings with them before."
"Why don't you tell me more about them," she said in a rush, tipping the antiseptic over her wound until the whole bottle's worth ran down her arm.
The pain was terrible. She saw stars, yelled, and felt her mouth being covered.
"We're not alone in the woods here," said Blackwall, gloved hand still over her mouth. She nodded, breathing heavily, and he quickly removed his hand. For a moment, he seemed uncomfortable, clearing his throat and giving her a businesslike nod.
"Can't be too careful," he said.
"Yes," said Lilith, still shaking. She held an end of bandage in her teeth and wound the other end around her arm.
"So," she said, when she'd finished. "The Crossroads are a mess, the woods are a mess." She pictured Matthias, again, surrounded, and again banished the mental image. If she lingered on that picture, she'd be too afraid to move, let alone fight her way to Redcliffe.
"You'll find trouble anywhere," said Blackwall. "But you'd do best taking the same route your boy was headed toward. He's…alone?"
"He's not alone," she said, picking up her axe from her side because she had to do something with her hands as she spoke. "There were two with us. Our neighbor. She's injured. And there's another mage. Tranquil." She dug her fingernail into the axe handle, picking a little groove into the wood.
They were both silent, which was at that moment unbearable. Lilith stood and gave her axe a practice swing. Her wound smarted at the sudden movement, but she swung again. Anything to outpace her panic. She'd found early on that she had to do something—anything—when she was afraid. Once she sat down, lay down, let herself stop and think, she was sunk every time.
"So I'd say the Crossroads it is, Warden Blackwall," she said, cramming all practicalities to the back of her mind. There were endless complications down the road, but it had to be enough that she had her axe and her limbs more-or-less intact.
"Right," said Blackwall, speaking slowly, lost in thought. "You know, if your boy's gone through the Crossroads…he's likely found some protection by now."
"What do you mean?" said Lilith. She turned to him. The morning sunlight was angled toward him and the expression on his face was hard to read.
"The apostate mages look after their own," he said. "If they see he's got magic, they'll aid him however they can."
Lilith had witnessed this firsthand. The apostates did tend to care fiercely for the children who'd been left hanging when the circles dissolved and the unrest began. For some, the concern was for safety only, and they'd fight tooth and nail to protect them.
Others saw only unmolded minds and untapped power, and there were whisperings they'd found terrible uses for the uneducated mage-children.
"I know they look after their own," she said. "But…"
But the idea of leaving Matthias to the possible mercy of a volatile scattering of apostate mages gave her no comfort. For a moment, she couldn't avoid letting herself feel the overwhelming anxiety that had been dogging her. She looked him in the eye. He saw it.
She got ahold of herself quickly, picking up her pack and strapping it to herself. But the fear fought harder now for her full attention.
"I've got to walk," she said, beginning in a random direction.
"I'll see you to Redcliffe, then," he said.
"What?" she stopped herself, surprised.
"It's not far. I'm headed that way anyway," he said. "Recruiting's good there." His voice took on an upbeat tone that didn't seem natural to him.
He stood by the edge of the forest, shield on his back already, armor glinting. His armor and his person seemed to have been battered, haphazardly patched up, and battered again. She caught sight of a long scar on one side of his face, half-hidden by beard.
She didn't know why he'd committed this much to helping her, but it was clear he'd lived through worse times than these. And clear that he was, for whatever reason, sincere.
Besides, he was a Warden, and a Warden's blade did real damage.
"All right," she said. He pointed her toward the road, and the two of them started on their way.
(-)
It was a peaceful enough morning that Lilith couldn't force herself to believe the unrest ahead was real. It was cold, still. The wind whistled in the trees and stung her ears, but the walking and climbing was enough to keep her warm. Besides, the sun was almost beautiful if you avoided looking in the direction of the Breach, and as they went the rocky hills became higher and higher, almost blocking the green rays out.
Almost. Nothing could really cover the Breach.
"Not a lot of darkspawn in the area, are there?" she asked Blackwall, to distract herself. He wasn't much of a talker.
"No…none to speak of," he said. He'd paused to check the path behind them for any sign of movement. The wind had been kicking up enough racket to cover the sound of footsteps.
"Have you heard anything of the darkspawn?" she asked. "Or, you know, felt it?"
"At the moment, we've got worse to worry about," said Blackwall, nodding in the direction of the Breach.
"I see," said Lilith.
He hadn't given her much of a response, but then, Wardens never tended to reveal much. Lilith had grown up near a Warden stronghold, in Ansburg, but the Wardens there usually took care to distance themselves. They rarely mingled with the general public. Lilith recalled herself and her friends hanging around a few of the young male Wardens, ham-fistedly flirting with them, and receiving a lot of one-word answers.
"Now we're on the road," said Blackwall. "I've got a question for you, too."
"Ask away," said Lilith.
They'd come upon a creek. The bridge across it was broken, and Lilith jumped onto the closest solid section. He followed.
"What's your name?" he asked.
Lilith turned to face him for a moment, startled she hadn't mentioned it.
"Lilith Herron," she said. "Pleased to meet you."
She gave a short bow. Proper introductions were a habit she'd never managed to lose.
"Yes," he said, and she could have sworn he smirked at her over-formal gesture. "Likewise."
She turned again and made the leap from the bridge to the bank.
"You're a Freemarcher," he said. "You sound it. Just."
"Just?" she said.
"You've got pretty manners," he said, "for an axe-lady from the woods."
She rolled her eyes, and managed a laugh. She was grateful for his company. Without it, she wasn't sure where her thoughts would have wandered to.
"Well, Warden Blackwall," she said. "I did grow up in the Free Marches, very rich, pretty…ah, empty-headed. I'm here now," she gestured at herself, "not in a particularly good state, looking none too pretty, still a little empty-headed. And that's about all."
"Understood. Won't ask again," he said.
She felt, once again, a flood of gratitude toward the Warden.
"And you?" she said. "We've a bit of a walk ahead of us. I'll work myself into a knuckle-biting frenzy without distraction. Tell me about yourself."
"Knuckle-biting?" he asked.
"I chewed on my knuckles as a child," said Lilith, lifting a hand to her mouth and pretending to gnaw it like a rat. "Anyway?"
"All right," said Blackwall. "I was born in the Free Marches," he began, affecting a dramatic, storyteller's voice.
"Good start," said Lilith.
"I'm passing through the Hinterlands, recruiting," he said.
"I see," said Lilith, nodding.
"That's about all," he finished.
"Threw that in my face pretty quickly, didn't you?" she said.
"Right. Neither of us has a life story," said Blackwall pointedly. "Funny, isn't it?"
"You're sure you're not from here?" said Lilith. "Hinterlands folk, you know, they don't ask or share anything. Tight-lipped." With that, though, she was brought back to earth from the nice distraction the conversation had brought. They weren't all tight-lipped, she remembered. Some, if you dangled money in front of them, would sell any information. And she was back to thinking about Matthias, flipping back and forth between terror and hope.
She looked again over the treetops, and received an unpleasant jolt when she saw that smoke and sparks were visible now. All at once, they'd come up on the Crossroads, and as they walked, sign after sign of fighting appeared. Bangs, clangs, and shouting entered her earshot. There was the scent of smoke on the wind, the unnatural smell of electricity, and then a sweet, organic burnt smell that Lilith recognized but wouldn't name to herself.
"When we get to the Crossroads," said Blackwall, "I go ahead of you, and you need to keep your head down. You're not a threat and we're to give them no reason to think so. If they force a fight at you…" he pointed toward her axe. "Go for the throat if you can. If you try pulling that blade from a wooden shield, you're going to chance re-opening the wound on your arm."
She took a deep breath, and another. "Avoid sticking the axe-blade in anything dense. Got it," she said. The noise was getting so loud that it was hard to hear herself speak.
She wondered, spotting a blue haze drifting into the air, whether Matthias would have been frightened enough to use his magic. She remembered how fast fear got his hands smoking. Her hands broke into a sweat, never mind the cold air. Her mouth went dry.
Don't let him. Don't let him, she prayed. The Maker didn't tend to get any of her messages, but she felt a little better asking.
They'd come to a fork in the road. Patchy pine trees, and flatter land than before, lay ahead of them. Lilith saw a scattering of buildings consumed by soft flames. It was a bizarre sight in the early afternoon sunlight; fire and electricity were out-of-place. She couldn't make herself believe it, completely, but the screams that hit her ears got her pulse racing.
Two more voices screaming. One agonizingly drawn-out and high-pitched. She tried to identify the sound of them; none were the voices of children. Not yet.
Her heart pounded in her ears as they approached the burning houses. She listened breathlessly to every scream and shout, waiting and terrified to hear a child's voice somewhere.
"Stick as close as you can to the trees," said Blackwall's voice at her shoulder, sounding quiet now against the racket.
She drew back with him, and they crept in the scant shadows of the trees. There wasn't much cover, and they passed the first burning house, close enough to feel its heat. Lilith began to sweat. She had a broader view of the area, now. Trees, houses, and small, moving objects—she couldn't think people—were sporadically on fire. There were snarls of people here and there, mage and Templar, and she saw none she recognized.
"We pass the Crossroads, we're right on the old Redcliffe Road," he said, pointing. "You see the wall in the distance?"
It was partly obscured by smoke, but Lilith could make it out. It wasn't much, but it steeled her as much as she could expect anything to do gearing up to walk into an inferno.
"And exactly how likely are they to let us in?" she asked, it occurring to her that anyone lucky enough to have that wall between themselves and the bloodshed wasn't likely to want guests.
He didn't answer. Faster than thinking, a burning bolt fried the air above his head. He ducked, and Lilith stumbled away with him. Three robed men ran past them. From behind another burning building, two Templars—one limping, the other swinging his blade rabidly—rushed the mages.
One of the mages, a man with long, grey hair, spotted them, and yelled.
"On both sides," he shouted to his partners, and they split, one attacking the injured Templars, the other two advancing on Lilith and Blackwall.
"Stop," yelled Lilith. She coughed on the smoke, then regained her voice. "We're not Templars. NOT TEMPLARS." The next bolt of electricity zipped past her ear, so close her hair stood on end and she twitched.
"Too late, doesn't matter," shouted Blackwall, rushing one of the mages, head lowered. Lilith heard a smashing noise and was herself too caught up in swinging her axe as fast as she could into the grey old mage's face.
The impact jolted her and sent a sharp pain through her arm, but she couldn't think on it. The man made a terrible noise too muffled for a yell. That sent a jolt through her too, and made some outside force clutch at her chest and detach her thoughts from her surroundings.
Everything began to feel fluid, quiet, and strange.
More electricity, this bolt ice-cold, zipped past her, and she ducked it, rushing in its source's direction.
The source was a woman, an elf, very skinny, with huge eyes and a glazed expression Lilith numbly recognized as the same she must have. The elf, in a fast motion like a twitch, raised her staff, and Lilith slashed at her. Lilith, swinging arms feeling nothing now, saw the blade make contact, at the elf's chest, at her throat. She saw the woman flail her staff-arm. Saw her stagger. Saw the eyes wake up, mouth open a few times into screams Lilith couldn't take in.
In a few moments, the elf was at a heap by Lilith's feet. But something grabbed her, dragged her.
She tried to hurl herself forward, hollering. A man's voice yelled, over and over, at her. She thrust her head backward and tried to stamp on the man's feet.
"Lilith," shouted the man. She stopped, distantly wondering, and remembered Blackwall.
Her shoulders sank. He turned her to face him, pointing both fingers to his eyes.
"Wake up," he shouted at her, and she just began to, painfully. She could feel her chest expanding and contracting rapidly, throat gasping scorching air. The feeling was too much.
"I can't," she said, and ran.
(-)
Lilith fought with dangerously little skill or thought, but she was ferocious. Bones cracked, blood spattered. She was hot-blooded, fast, strong and made much stronger by either rage or fear. At first, anyway. But she was also very much like most of the newer soldiers Blackwall recalled serving under him. She reacted the same way most of them had once forced too soon into too chaotic a battle. She panicked, she flung herself into it, and she was too overwhelmed to pay attention to much of anything.
He spotted her, once, hit by a shield and beginning to fall. But he was caught up himself in fending off one of the apostates, and when he saw her next, she was upright. Stumbling, though.
"Lilith," he yelled in her direction. She looked around herself, in a daze, then spotted him. He gestured with his sword in the direction of the trees. She moved gingerly toward them, and he caught up with her there.
They had, somehow not dead, come to a lull in the fighting. Redcliffe was ahead of them, and she began coming more to herself.
"It's close," she murmured at him when she spotted him, pointing in the direction of the wall. She staggered, reaching, toward one of the rangy evergreens, then sank down beside it.
"One moment," she said, setting her axe on her lap. She tilted her head toward the sky, catching her breath. He sat by her, removed his helmet and ran the back of his hand over his sweating brow. The wind picked up, thank the Maker, and he removed a health potion from his belt and drank. He was worn, too, from fighting.
He remembered Lilith's injury.
"Your arm," he said, looking it over. Blood stained the bandage, but not as extensively as it could have.
"It's not too bad," said Lilith. She opened her eyes again. "I need to…" she muttered, and removed her pack from her back, opening and going through it. She removed a bottle and tipped it to her mouth, draining it quickly.
"Warden Blackwall," came a nearby voice.
He looked up to see Giles, one of the local farmers, standing at his side, a grazing goat at his side. Blackwall wasn't sure how either Giles or the goat were standing there so completely calm and unharmed, but Giles was so odd that most rules didn't apply to him. It was impossible to tell his age—Blackwall had tried to guess a few times, looking at him, and had come up with vastly different guesses each time—and besides, he seemed to appear always in the worst places. Once, though, he'd approached Blackwall with a nephew of his. "Warden, I'd like you to conscript this idiot," he'd told him. Blackwall had done so—the young man had been willing enough—and Giles had thought highly of him ever since.
"Giles," he said, nodding at him.
"Young lady," said Giles, holding up a hand in greeting to Lilith. "You look half-dead."
"I am," agreed Lilith. "Hello."
"We're headed toward Redcliffe," said Blackwall. "She's been separated from her son. Thinks he's likely there."
"Ten-year-old boy," said Lilith. "Bit tall, skinny, dark hair, with a female dwarf and a blonde young lady, a tranquil mage—"
"Saw them," said Giles.
"What?" said Lilith, placed a hand over her mouth, removed it, and didn't seem to know what to do. "Where? Are they hurt? Where'd they go?"
She stood.
"Redcliffe way," he said. "They were on the road."
"Thank you," gasped Lilith, and, apparently forgetting the both of them, turned and ran.
"All right, Warden," said Giles, watching her. "By the way, I've met the Herald of Andraste."
"What?" Blackwall forgot, for a moment, about the retreating Lilith. He wasn't sure whether Giles was serious.
"Yes. Looking for some of those rifts out there. He had a green spot across his palm," said Giles. "Red-haired fellow. No older than twenty. Didn't seem very intimidating, if I'm honest. Made a lot of stupid jokes and I couldn't understand half of what he was saying. His lady friend, though," he whistled. "Terrifying. And beautiful. Maker's breath, man, I'm telling you-"
"All right, then, Giles," said Blackwall, before Giles could go on. His descriptions of women tended to take very bizarre turns out of nowhere, and besides, Lilith had covered quite some distance already.
(-)
Redcliffe village, behind its ancient wall, was a resilient old place. In Blackwall's memory, it was a community constantly on its last legs; darkspawn and undead came at it and came so close to consuming the place that it didn't seem likely to bounce back. It did, though, every time.
The only issue was that once it bounced back from each new evil, it returned to life with something off about it. Made sense; you came out of each fight to the death with a few deep scars. Redcliffe's scars formed differently with each new battle. This time, they became evident as soon as he and Lilith passed the front gate.
"Why does it smell like that?" he heard Lilith muttering to herself, as the guards allowed them entry. There was a smell, apart from the usual dead fish stink of the lake. It was burnt and bitter, but otherwise difficult to place.
"Mages," one of the guards called after her. "That's magic stinks that way. Filthy spellbind fuckers overrunning the place."
"I see," said Lilith. Her voice was about as polite as usual. Her glare wasn't.
"Do you smell it?" she asked, squinting in concentration. "Or has something back there—" she indicated the Crossroads, "—addled my brain and singed my nose hairs?" She placed a hand gingerly on her eye. "Something seems to have cracked my skull too."
Imagine that, he thought. He pictured her with an arrow through her guts, looking down at the thing in pleasant surprise.
"Which is why you watch what you're doing," he said.
She tilted her head back, raising an eyebrow at him. Lilith's face had a severity to it; it was rather long, with sharp features and dark, narrow eyes. It happened that the way she looked at him awoke a paranoia he usually tried to ignore. It'd been some time since he'd felt that anyone, looking at him, was mentally stripping away his beard and Warden attire. He'd gotten to feeling, if not content, then hidden enough to wander away the rest of his days while his past self grew more distant and less real.
He knew why he'd followed Lilith this far. Why he'd been unable to leave her side since she'd mentioned her child.
That was why when Lilith looked at him he felt himself transforming into thirty-three year old Rainier again. Once in a while he encountered someone who gave him that feeling; mothers with young children, especially.
"So, Warden Blackwall," she said, and mercifully looked away from him. "We've made it into Redcliffe. This is where you leave, isn't it? Grey Warden business?"
She did not, of course, see thirty-three year old Rainier when she saw him. There was no horror or disgust in her eyes or her voice. Only barely-hidden nervousness, but she'd been nervous from the start over her son.
"This is Grey Warden business," he said. "Fighting goes on and children get dragged into it for nothing. I see you and the boy safely reunited, my business is done."
(-)
Lilith hadn't counted on the number of mages they'd find in Redcliffe. She'd seen a fair few on its streets during previous errands there, but now most of the people they passed were dressed in robes and carrying a staff. Town guardsmen were few and far between, but they asked a few of them if they'd seen anyone fitting Matthias' description.
One man found the question hilarious.
"Oh, you're missing a…let me get this straight, now…" he held a hand out, feigning concentration, "a boy, about ten years old, and he's got magic. Yeah?"
"Black hair, this tall," said Lilith, holding a hand up to demonstrate.
"Yes, yes," said the man. "You're on the hunt for a mage in Redcliffe."
"Have you seen the boy or not?" spoke up Blackwall, hand on his sword's hilt.
"Don't know. Probably," said the man. "You know who's up in that castle?"
"My guess would have to be the Arl," said Lilith, getting tired of the conversation already.
"The Arl!" said the man, mockingly. He then went dead-serious, and very red-faced, veins popping up where Lilith hadn't previously seen veins. "Tevinters!" he barked, pointing at the castle. "Fucking mages let nasty Tevinter fuckers into our village! Getting all set to make us into slaves, just like they like! You think the Arl's done fuck-all to stop them? Eh?"
"Bill," said a nearby guard, a young woman. "Shut up. Voice down."
"No," said Bill, but he lowered his voice anyway. "Hope you're ready for life as a Tevinter slave, Charlotte. Got no magic in you, that's the life you're headed toward with those ugly sods in the Arl's seat."
"I know," said Charlotte, glancing at the castle, voice quieting. "So shut up. You—" she pointed at Lilith. "You think your son's here?"
"Have you seen him?" said Lilith.
"Not him, exactly," said Charlotte. "The little ones, though—with magic—they're being kept safe enough up at Redcliffe castle."
Lilith could have kissed her. "Thank you," she said, with a short bow.
"Watch yourself," said Charlotte.
"Yeah. No need to start carrying any little Tevinter magisters, is there," said Bill, who'd been busying himself giving Blackwall the fishy eye while Blackwall stared impassively back at him.
"Just watch yourself," said Charlotte, speaking loudly and ignoring Bill. "Alexius—fellow up in the Arl's seat—he's iffy if you're one of them without magic. Odd stuff going on up there, too. My advice is, take your boy and get out of town. Try to get to Haven if you can."
There was a sinking feeling in Lilith's gut. This was happening too soon, this business of having to get out of town. She'd given birth to Matthias right at the tail end of a blight, and since seen fighting of all kinds. But it hadn't been until the sky had opened that she'd started to get the feeling that no matter where she went, there were no safe places left.
"I see," said Lilith. "Until then. Alexius…is he likely to put up a fight?"
"Hard to say," said Charlotte. "But I wouldn't bring one to him. You act as refined as you can with those weapons on your backs. They like refined. All of them think we're a bunch of savages down south, so if you act different maybe you'll catch them off-guard. And ah—" she cast her gaze over to Blackwall. "If you can clean up a bit, I'd do it. You smell. Both of you, actually."
"Yes, make yourself more desirable," said Bill, pointing to Lilith. "They like a clean-smelling slave girl, don't they?"
"Again," said Charlotte. "Shut up."
"I'm telling you," Bill said. "That Tevinter mage the other day, you heard him. 'Would you mind directing me to your women, I haven't impregnated nearly enough of them today'. Said it right to my face."
"Which Tevinter, the pretty one with the mustache?" said Charlotte. "I don't think he was serious, Bill. Listen," she turned to Lilith, "you'd better go before he rants more."
"How'd Tevinters get in here?" Lilith asked Blackwall, as they turned up a sidestreet, hiking up the hill.
"Damned if I know," said Blackwall. "This is the first I've heard."
Lilith shook her head. "World's gone mad," she said.
The castle was surprisingly far from the village gates; they spent longer than Lilith had anticipated climbing rickety stairs and well-worn dirt paths around Redcliffe's many hills, and they came to three different dead ends on five occasions. Within a half-hour they found themselves outside the castle gate. Lilith had never been so close to it. The castle was huge, and forbidding. She shivered, gazing into its highest windows. Charlotte had mentioned that the children were being kept safe up there, but how safe, around Tevinter magisters, it wasn't clear.
Two village guards stood by the gate. They didn't appear to be Tevinter, which was somewhat comforting.
Then again, Lilith was unsure what Tevinters did look like. She'd never seen one, and so usually pictured them as most southerners did; with demon-eyes and yoked slaves at their feet.
"State your business," said the first guard, sounding bored. Ferelden accent. That was good.
"I'm looking for my son," said Lilith. "Refugee from the Hinterlands. Matthias Herron. One of the other guards mentioned some of the mage-children were being kept here. "
"There was a boy named Matthias," said the guard. "He showed up yesterday. Had a female dwarf with him and one of those tranquil mages."
"He's here?" said Lilith. "I can see him?"
"He's here, yes," said the guard, staring at something in the middle distance. "You can see him."
The voice behind him called out something. It had taken on a sharp tone.
"They'll bring him down here, they said," said the guard, voice growing nervous, speaking quickly and standing straighter, stiffly.
Lilith nodded, anxious herself at the man's tone and at the faceless voice. Footsteps sounded, moving away from them, and Lilith was left waiting. The guard wouldn't make eye contact with her, and silence fell.
(-)
Disclaimer: Bioware owns Dragon Age. I don't.
Hi readers. SleepiPanda, CakeBacon, and Senomaros, thanks for reviewing :).
So, a preview you never asked for for the NEXT CHAPTER: Lilith deals with some Tevinter mages, we get Matthias' view on things, which are getting weird fast, Blackwall does his own mysterious thing, and we hear more on this Herald of Andraste everyone's talking about.